I woke up this morning, started to scan the news on Techmeme, and spotted an InfoWorld headline from a story about a new HP battery that very briefly got me very excited (hey, I was still a little drowsy):

A 3-year battery! That would be 26,280 hours of power between charges if I have my math right–26,304 if we’re talking a leap year. And it was just three months ago that HP was trumpeting its also-impressive-sounding 24-hour battery:

Okay, okay–the new battery doesn’t run for three years. (I think–actually, the story on InfoWorld doesn’t state how long it’ll run.) But it’s still interesting.

The battery in question is a lithium-ion model was developed by Boston Power, and the three years (or 1,000 charges) are how long it takes before the power it provides on a charge begins to degrade. (Typical battery start to weaken after 300 charges, according to the article.) It’ll also charge to 80 percent of its full capacity in a zippy 30 minutes.

HP is calling these Enviro batteries, and will sell them as a custom-configuration option for $20-$30 with certain consumer notebooks starting early next year. I’d certainly upgrade to one if I were buying an HP laptop.

But I still hope to live to see a laptop battery that just keeps going and going for three years or more…